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Month: June 2017

The flames licked Kylo Ren’s lips, lapped at his throat and down his bare chest, awakening waves of sensation he forgot he’d ever felt before. His whole body was ablaze. The fire swooped lower and ignited his core so that he burned bright and hot from the inside out. The white heat was unbearable, yet he longed to be consumed by it, to blaze like a star gone nova, impregnating the galaxy with the seed of life itself.

It was all so big — this thing that was the universe — bigger than the Light and the Dark. Bigger than the Force. It overwhelmed and surrounded him, made him feel small yet limitless at the same time. He surrendered to the sensation of vastness, power, and helplessness, his breath coming in quick gasps.

But the flames had other plans for his bewildered mind. They leapt up in a familiar place, a much smaller place, though he’d only seen it before in holovids. The Jedi temple — one of thousands strung across the galaxy like pearls in a necklace. A figure cloaked in black stood watching the sacred grounds go up in a blaze that sent walls crumbling and the roof caving in in a shower of sparks. It was night and the smoke billowed and smoldered in great clouds of vile consummation.

Ren wanted to laugh. Temples were superficial things made by mortal men. Everything made by sentient beings was destined to revert back into the atoms from whence it came. Time was the master of all things, and yet time couldn’t destroy the Force. It was and ever would be. Whoever the cloaked figure was was an idiot. He thought by destroying the temple, he would destroy a conduit of the Force. Kylo ignored the annoying Force-vision and returned his mind to more pleasurable matters.

Until a shiny robotic hand reached out to rest reassuredly on the domed head of droid.

A blue-and-white astromech droid.

Ren sat bolt upright with a grunt of desperation, tumbling Amanda off of him. He was out of bed and reaching for a robe before she could grab him and pull him back.

She sighed. He was so distracted these days. “What is it? What do you see?” She tucked a strand of long blond hair behind her ear and clutched the black satin sheet to her breasts.

Kylo had begun to pace before the long transparisteel windows of their flat. “He’s burning the archives!” His fingers flexed into fists at his sides.

“Who is? What archives?” she asked in a patient tone.

“My uncle!” he snarled. “The Jedi archives on Ilum!”

Amanda blinked. “Why would he do that?”

It’s so much bigger, Ben, Ren heard Luke say through the Force. All of it — the Light, the Dark. It doesn’t matter. All that was taught was wrong. The two cannot be separated. The Truth lies beyond the edge of Known Space.

“No!” Kylo raised a fist and pounded the window. “You have no right to rob me of that knowledge!”

Amanda Snoke sighed again, grateful for the durability of transparisteel. She slid out of bed, trailing the sheet like a train.

Ren raised a fist again. “You have no right to decide say what the Truth is!” BANG! “I have the right to decide for myself!” BANG!

“Stop,” Amanda said softly, laying a hand on his shoulder.

He wrenched away to scream at the night-lit skyline, “I hate you!”

Amanda watched the grandson of Darth Vader rail and pace like a caged animal, alternately holding his head in disbelief and flailing his fists in rage.

“I never had a chance to go through them!” he wailed. “I never had a chance to look at those files! They date back before the Jedi!”

“I know,” Amanda told him in a understanding tone. She grabbed him, pulled him around, and cupped his face in her hands. “Done is done. You don’t need those files to be who you are. They don’t define you.” She gripped him by the hair, her gaze intensifying. “Come back to me.”